Citizenship, Statelessness and the Status of Women in Lebanon

In Lebanon, if you are a woman, you cannot pass your citizenship to your husband or children. In the case of women married to foreigners, the children of this union have a very real possibility of being left stateless. Homegrown statelessness isn’t a problem unique to Lebanon, but it has especial potency because of the growing number of refugees that are present within Lebanon’s borders. While the focus may be on the stateless people that are flooding in through the Syrian border, those that are born into statelessness through the configuration of Lebanon’s citizenship law deserve some attention.